Classroom management is among the greatest obstacles to student success. If classroom disruptions persist, teachers lose teaching time and students lose learning time.

The University of Houston Consistency Management & Cooperative Discipline (CMCD) program, part of the College of Education, is the recipient of a $3.5 million grant from the Institute of Education Science (IES) to study how CMCD strategies affect the behavior and achievement of more than 31,000 Houston-area elementary students.

The IES is the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

CMCD is an award-winning program that teaches research-based, classroom-tested classroom management strategies. The program fosters student personal responsibility leading to greater self-discipline. This is accomplished by forging positive teacher-student relationships, creating organized learning environments, improving instruction and cooperatively establishing classroom discipline procedures. Schools using CMCD strategies significantly reduce disruptive behavior, increase instructional time and improve student achievement. CMCD has been recognized by entities such as the School Superintendents Association, Project Grad, The London Challenge and the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Prevention Programs, among many others.

"Much of how teachers teach is a function of their concerns about classroom management. However, management is more than student discipline," said Jerome Freiberg, a UH John & Rebecca Moores Endowed professor and director of CMCD. "The impact of our program on these issues is expected to decrease student office disciplinary referrals and increase student learning."

The grant will fund a four-year study of the CMCD's effectiveness in classrooms of 30 elementary schools in the Aldine Independent School District. The program will focus on third and fourth grade, a critical time period for intervention, as outcomes during these stages of development often predict future student success.

For the first two years of the study, half the teachers will receive CMCD intervention training and coaching support and half will follow established practices. The reverse is implemented in the third and fourth years of the study. UH Professors David Francis and Coleen Carlson of the UH Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation and Statistics (TIMES) are co-investigators on the study and will conduct evaluations.

"The CMCD intervention is at a point where conducting experimental studies on its efficacy, effectiveness and sustainability will provide important information about the program's potential for long-term change and next levels of dissemination," Freiberg said. "Given the growing needs of teachers and their districts, this study highlights a unique area of educational research in classroom management, offering the potential for real educational improvement."

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